“Her Highest Praises Were Mocking Insults”—What It’s Like Growing Up With a Narcissist for a Parent

“As a child, my life became about pleasing my mother. She would discuss adult matters like her finance problems, which I would take seriously at age eight and caused me stress. She was in competition with everyone, even ill people, about who’s more ill. She would tell me my grandma was crude and horrible and I’m just like her. She read my diaries. She’d buy herself clothes but ‘could never afford’ them for me. Until I was 12, she used to lock me out of the house as punishment. The most detrimental thing about this behavior is that to the child, it’s normal. It’s love. It’s parenting. Healthy people seem weird [to me].” —Kathy